10pizza

as promised here's a pic of my fretpress:

I've used a manual hydraulic jack and mounted a plate above it. I used a small radius block between the fret/fretboard and the plate and just jacked the jack up to get the fret pressed in. Worked like a charm!

long time no updates.

Here's a quick report on the progress:

Made my own studs for the Tune-o-Matic bridge. I'll glue these into the body so the bridge is fixed solid.

Refretting has been done. Unfortunately some of the fretslots were too wide so I had to glue some of them in place. My own fretting-press machine worked out great. I'll post a pic this weekend.

Yesterday I filed the fret-ends which went well. Now I need to level them.

Hopefully some more progress in the coming weeks.

Ok, I got my hardware ( apart from the trem, which is on back order )

I found that there are no studs provided with the tune-o-matic bridge. Is it necessary to use studs for a tune-o-matic bridge?

It seems kind of fragile to just mount the tune-o-matic posts into a hole in the body.

thanks

anyone any ideas to have the old tuner screwholes dissapear? Not sure if I can find woodfiller in this color....

thanks

Received the fretwire today, looks like I picked the right size. It should fit in nicely. Not sure yet whether I need to glue or not

also got the tuners. Nice vintage kluson-type tuners with metal knobs from Gotoh.

I maybe need to drill the tuner holes a bit wider to fit the tuners, but that'll be allright.

Now find some time to build my fret-press and the fret pre-bender as described in the tutorial

I'll probably receive the fretwire tomorrow or so.

I'm planning to build a fretpress using a small hydraulic jack which I'll mount on a plate so that it hangs over my fretboard. Then I'll be able to press the frets in the board by jacking downwards on a radiused piece of wood on top of the fret.

When I have it built, I'll post a pic. Probably not before the weekend.

Thanks for the gesture!

I'll stick to the trem and bridge I've already ordered, I like the looks of it more!

p.s. can't get into the photobucket album

Okay,

Sunday's a nice day to do some work in the morning when you're not hungover

This morning I routed the controls cavity from the back and removed the epoxy leftovers from the pickup cavities.

here's the back:

Now I need to get a long drill to drill the holes for the pickup wiring. My dad has one, so I'll pick it up this week.

Damn! when do I get my new hardware!

cu

Some pics after todays work.

I sanded the body fills and filled some old screwholes:

A picture of the body before sanding:

Filled body

A picture of the fretboard after I've removed the frets:

Frets removed

I also sanded the board with my radius block:

Sanded board

Now I'll have to wait until my hardware arrives and I'll need to get a veneer top somewhere. I think the Arnhemse houthandel will be a good choice for that.

have a good weekend

I'll post some pics of the guitarbody with the mahogany put in using epoxy when my batteries are recharged.

This afternoon I went to my friends workshop and he made me some epoxy filler to get the stuff in. Now I just have to wait until tomorrow before I can do anything with it.

I also sanded the fretboard a little, just to clear the roughness from the fret-removal. The chips I've reglued all stayed in, so that's a relief.

As for the gluelines showing up on the body: I'm afraid you're right alex

Do you know a good adress in the netherlands for getting a veneer top? any idea on the cost?

thanks

An update with this mornings work.

First I glued the small chips in my neck just by keeping them stuck to the tape and putting some glue beneath them.

Then I built the router setup to make a 12" radius sanding block for my neck:

some more pics:

Router setup 2

Router setup 3

Worked like a charm! Thanks very much Anthony for this tutorial!

Then I created some fills for the cavities from Mahogany. Unfortunately I don't have a band-sander so I used a cutter to do the job. Not very happy with it, but it should be allright I hope when filling with epoxy.

Here's a pic:

Cavity Fills

This afternoon I'll visit my friends workshop to do the epoxy work.

Right Now I'll check out the fingerboard and do a little sanding to remove the finish and get it ready for refretting.

later

I haven't received any hardware yet, so no chance to start fretting this weekend

thanks for the tip. Makes things easier too

just scored me some new tools and Dremel-accesories to help make my life easier

Can't wait till tomorrow to get at it!

Managed to remove all of the frets yesterday evening using a special technique with a small chisel and a Mastercard. I used the small chisel to get under the fret and then used the creditcard to protect the fingerboard while pushing the fret out.

First I used an iron to heat the frets up and then let them cool down to shrink again.

It went very well, only 1 or 2 very small chips were removed when I lifted the tape from the board. I'll glue them back in tonight.

One question I have though: the wood on the edges of the fretslots is damaged by the initial fret installation and removing the frets did not make the wood chip but there was ofcourse a little bit of damaging of the fretslot edges. Is it necessary to do anything about this?

Tomorrow I have a day off so I can make my own 12" radius block and remove the finish from the neck and also smooth the fretslots.

Tonight I'll pickup a few pieces of mahogany from a friend ( he's a shipbuilder, plenty of mahogany ) so I can fill up the body tomorrow. My friend will then use epoxy to glue the pieces in the body.

Hopefully I'll receive the new hardware for the weekend so I can determine the bridge setup. I've noticed however that the neck-pocket is already angled because originally also a Tunomatic bridge was installed.

since this is my first project, I'd like to learn as much from it as possible. I'll try to fill up the cavities and see how it goes, somehow I feel challenged to do it the hard way, allthough I'll probably be punished for this attitude.

I might still use this as a template for a next project. But I'll try to stick to this one first.

By the way, this one doesn't have to be a perfect copy of the goldtop I posted above.

keep you posted

Good luck with your refinishing. I'll also be doing a Goldtop finish so I'll be watching this one close.

Have you already selected your paint / finish lacquer types?

just FYI: the pic of the Aria shown at the start of the topic is not mine. This one looks in very good shape, mine wasn't.

I don't think it's absolutely necessary to have roller saddles. Not using roller sadles will give a higher risk of string breaking when the saddles are rough,

but this should be ok I think.

I'll do a check on that anyway to be sure. Thanks for that remark.

A thought that just occured to me:

would it be very difficult to change this body to a non-pickguard version?

I'd have to fill up the routed cavity for the electronics and then route new ones from the back of course.

It would also give me the opportunity to put the input jack in the side in stead of on top.

I'll do a search to check if somebody has done this before

this would be the end-result goal:

Me too!

I just started working on my mosrite project, also with a Bigsby style trem, so I'm eager to see some succes stories!

Thanks for the feedback guys

Here's some more info and pics.

First some answers to the questions:

Mickguard: isn't the guitar routed for the original trem?

Yes it is, as you can see on the pic. I'm going to fill that up with a piece of Mahogany or something. The finish will be solid, so this should not be visible ( I hope )

I could put in a jazzmaster style trem, but I always loved the looks of the bigsby style and always wanted to try that on a guitar.

To whitetrashrocknroll: what do you mean with changing the selector switch to the lower 'bout'?

Do you have pics/stories about your work on your johnny ramone style mosrite?

here's a pic of the sanded body front:

and the back:

Body back

the fretboard:

Fretboard

and the peg:

Peghead

Newbie terror

I was a bit scared yesterday when I read some posts about putting a TOM-bridge on a bolted-on guitar but since the original also had a TOM rollerbridge I think I should be ok. I'm going to try to do a dry-test when I receive the bridge so I can check if i need to put in an angle on the neck.

Also I was scared that I ordered the wrong hardware because I didn't check the neck radius yet. Using the paper tool provided somewhere in this forum I determined that it's a 12" radius, the same as the Tunomatic, so I guess I'm lucky there.

One question I have regarding to that anyway: It seems that all the tunomatic bridges you can order have a 12" saddle radius. Does that mean if you have a neck with a different radius you can not use a Tune-o-matic bridge?

Coming up

Friday I'll try to take the day off so I can try to make my own 12" radius sanding block using my router. I'll try to use the setup described in this forum.

Also I need to remove the last frets from the neck. I'll try to use an iron to quickly heat it. The frets aren't glued in, but heating should help anyway. I'll buy some nippers and try to make my own fret-nipper.

Keep those questions and remarks coming!

Hi all,

I'm a 33-year old guitar-addict from the Netherlands

I'm not new to this forum but this is the first time I'm actually going to do some handcraft on a guitar, so I'd

just want to try to keep you informed around the progress.

This is the guitar I'll be working on, a 1973 Aria Mosrite copy from Japan:

Planned Work

When I bought the guitar a year ago, It had a damaged tremelo system and also some of the frets were loose. Also the tuners were crap.

I also don't like the guitars sunburst finish that much so here's what I'm going to do:

- refretting the neck ( dunlop 6130 fretwire )

- refinishing the body in a Gold-finish

- install new hardware: bridge/Tremelo/tuners

- refinish the pickguard

- put on a new headstock logo

So the goal will be something like this, but with a black pickguard:

Gold mosrite

New hardware

This is the hardware I'm going to use to install on the guitar. I'd prefer an original Moseley Trem, but these are very hard to find so I'll use this:

Duesenberg D-5 super Tremola and Tunamatic Bridge:

Duesenberg D-5

Duesenberg Tunamatic

Gotoh SD-90M tuning machines ( vintage Kluson style )

Gotoh SD-90M

Duesenberg style volume/tone knobs:

The Knobs

I hope to receive the parts this week.

Current State

Last week (one has to do something around christmas :-) ) I sanded of the original sunburst finish and I have now a clean body. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

I also started to remove the frets. The loose ones are out but some were put in tight so I'll use the information I found on this forum to try to remove these without damaging the board. I already had to glue one chip back in, I'd rather avoid that.

Also using the information I found here I hope to do the following this week:

- determine the neck radius

- routing my own radius sanding-block

A few questions that I've got at this time:

1. Wouldn't it be possible to use the radius sanding-block also to radius the fretwire?

2. Is glueing the frets neccesary or optional?

ok guys, thanks for your attention and I'll try to keep this updated.